Criminalising drug users only makes things worse. They need support to get safer medications and deal with underlying problems
- Peter Krykant is a project lead for the substance misuse charity Cranstoun
I write this from a Birmingham city centre hotel, a few minutes’ walk from a doorway I slept rough in during the 1990s, near the alleyways where I injected drugs. Sadly, more than 20 years later, people are still sleeping in that same doorway and are still injecting drugs in those alleyways.
The government’s 10-year drug strategy, announced on Monday, will do little to help these people. It is a criminal sanction-led approach – and I know from my own experience that a system designed to punish rather than support will only force drug users into hiding, back to those filthy dark alleyways with the rats running about.
Peter Krykant is a project lead for the substance misuse charity Cranstoun
